DHS surfing the retirement wave, turns focus to leadership, morale

Agency of the Month

The Homeland Security Department hasn't experienced the
retirement wave or had to
offer buyouts or early retirements to employees like many other agencies. In fact,
it experiences an annual turnover rate of only 1.35 percent for its 240,000
employees.

Catherine Emerson, DHS's chief human capital officer, said the bigger challenge
instead is ensuring the agency's current employees have the skills to meet
existing and
future needs.

"We got our components together and we have been examining skill set needs and
mission critical occupation needs," Emerson said Tuesday during an exclusive
interview on In Depth with Francis Rose as part of Federal News Radio's
Agency of the Month series.
"We've gotten our components together sharing needs, sharing best practices,
sharing what is occurring in the agencies and looking at what skill set is needed
out of each different occupation we have. What occupations we have that are
mission critical and what occupations we will need in the future."

At one level down from the department view, the Coast Guard is having a similar
experience with its workforce.

Vice Adm. Manson Brown, deputy commandant for mission support, said both civilian
and military servicemen and women are staying in the service longer.

"When the recession lifts, I think we will have to put strategies in place to
bring in fresh talent without losing that corporate knowledge," Brown said. "We
want to anticipate and take a look at various disciplines we employ as part of our
workforce so when we outreach to the various sectors we can target the people we
need to come in behind them."

He said one challenge is the fact that employees are working longer and the Coast
Guard's strategy hasn't come to terms with that changing dynamic.

Morale needs attention

Just as important as figuring out training needs is improving employee morale
across DHS.

Emerson said DHS has been at the bottom of the governmentwide surveys for some
time. The fiscal 2011 Employee Viewpoint Survey
(EVS), conducted by
the Office of Personnel Management, found DHS employees ranked the agency in the
bottom five for all four categories: management and leadership, having a results-
oriented culture, talent management and overall job satisfaction.

Emerson said DHS is taking several steps to change the perception and reality
among employees.

First, Secretary Janet Napolitano charged the director of each component to make
employee engagement a priority.

Napolitano created a senior level employee engagement steering committee, which
Emerson leads, to ensure communication and strategies are consistent across the
department.

"We also talk about the EVS survey and where changes need to be made, where
employees requested we take a look at an employee recognition program," Emerson
said. "In fact, as a result of the last survey in 2011, the Secretary is putting
together a Secretary's honors award program where we will recognize our employees.
We also have a leadership development program underway where we will are looking
at leadership at all different levels for all employees at DHS."

At the Coast Guard, Brown said the 2012 survey received a record response, more
than 60 percent of all employees answered it.

"In terms of survey results, that's really record breaking," he said. "That really
means our employees are engaged and involved. A big part of that response was we
conveyed to them how important their feedback was not only to the Secretary and
the department, but to leaders throughout the Coast Guard."

Brown said typically the Coast Guard will take the results from the survey and
create focus groups or dedicated teams to help them improve the areas where they
may have fallen short in.

Developing the next set of leaders

Emerson said DHS also is using a focused approach to address some of its biggest
workforce challenges — leadership development.

DHS has two new initiatives to train new and current employees.

"Right now we are focusing on an aspect of leadership development called
Cornerstone, where we are working with those frontline managers, supervisors," she
said. "Those that have the day-to-day interaction with the employee where that's
the time where leadership skills are established."

She said DHS has worked with its components to identify training elements and the
program is underway.

A second program, called Capstone, looks at senior executives. DHS uses best
practices to ensure training is up-to-date. She said the agency ran a pilot this
summer and now is evaluating the results.

"We are looking at things such as meta-leadership, leadership in emergency
situations and we are relying on experts in the field, experts throughout DHS,
what components are doing that is working and getting feedback from our employees
about what did they find useful to becoming a great leader," she said.

All of this focus on morale and leadership comes at an important time for DHS, and
especially the Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard is planning to move into its new headquarters on the St.
Elizabeth's complex in Washington.

Gearing up to move to St. E's

Brown said starting in August about 300 employees will move each week and it
should take about four months to move all 3,700 workers to the new headquarters.

He said the Coast Guard started earlier this year outreach to employees and the
community to prepare for the move.

"We've established essentially a campaign plan to focus on the needs of our
employees, the structure of the move and the need to outreach to the community in
Ward 8," he said. "The biggest problem we face is many of our employees have been
at the Coast Guard complex for years. We will change their commuting habits. We
will change their childcare needs. We will change everything they have become
comfortable with. Change management is a big component of this and that is where
employee engagement comes in."

Brown said the service created employee stakeholder groups focusing on areas such
as transportation to give workers choices for how they can get to work at the new
headquarters.

"Transportation is the long pole in the tent. It was the thing our employees were
most concerned about. There a couple of dynamics there. We have a lot of available
commercial parking at our current facility. That will not be the case when we
move. People will have to focus on other options to commute. We wanted to attack
that first. As part of our campaign plan, we've got a series of conversations we
want to have with our workforce. The next one is security. What are their concerns
do they have and what are we doing to address those concerns?"

Brown said they want to have the conversation early so there is no anxiety just
before or just after the move.

The Coast Guard also is working with the community by meeting with Churches and
public schools in the neighborhood.

As for the rest of the DHS moving to St. E's, Emerson said a lot is dependent on
budget and resources.